


Unsustainable

by mamakashi



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-24
Updated: 2014-06-24
Packaged: 2018-02-05 23:56:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1836829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mamakashi/pseuds/mamakashi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>However far he goes, you follow. Nothing less, and certainly nothing more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unsustainable

**Author's Note:**

> Written for OTP battle back in February.

_I’m in front of your house._ His messages always come abruptly, loaded with expectation and blatant disregard for time and circumstance. You tread softly down the stairs, careful not to alert the members of your household.

True to his word, he’s there when you crack open the front door, outlined in moonlight like an apparition in the night.

“Midorima, let’s run.”

There’s a tremble in his voice, foreign to your ears, that you don’t quite register in the first split second. A question of ‘why’ hangs off the tip of your tongue—a question you quickly swallow when you see the dampness of his lashes, the dewiness of his eyes, dusk cast over the shoulders of a boy who looks ready to break.

So you don’t ask, you follow, for your place by his side is a matter of fact. In the very beginning, you had resisted, clutching hard to your pride until you realized he had no intention of stripping you of it. He liked you better for it.

He leaves your door with nothing but a jacket you hastily retrieved and draped around him. Even with nothing, you’re certain he doesn’t and has never needed you. Together, you board the train towards a destination undetermined.

He’s staring out the window though there’s not much to see but the reflections on the glass and the shadows beyond it. Though calm on the surface, you know he is not in full possession of himself. Everything you take is only everything he allows, and now he has closed himself off from you completely. The silence offers nothing.

You don’t notice he’s fallen asleep until you feel the soft weight of his body slumped onto your shoulder.

The train is halfway to Sendai by the time you wake him. He stirs from your shoulder and brushes the hair out of his eyes while you shake the stiffness from your arm. The wrinkles of your sweater is pressed into the side of his forehead. He leans on you, yawning and woozy and completely unbecoming, as the two of you exit at the next stop.

The streets are much quieter, much emptier here. You purchase sustenance at a convenience store and ask the store clerk for directions to the nearest inn.

The innkeeper gives you a funny look, like he knows you’re not supposed to be here, but he says nothing when you request a room, for two futons to be laid out. You reach for your wallet and pay for the night without second thought. You know Akashi will see that you are compensated. He is the sort of person who takes nothing for granted, who knows the score between him and the rest of the world. You wish he’d forget where he and you stood every once in awhile, only so that you could inch closer.

You lie next to him in the dark. The darkness brings with it a temporary sense of security. It brings forth the courage within you to say things, to reach clumsily for his hand. You wonder if he thinks it presumptuous of you, but his fingers readily receive and curl over yours.

“Where should we go tomorrow?” He asks, smiling blithely like a child, and your heart gives a weak flutter. “Hokkaido?”

“Don’t joke about that, or we really are going.”

"Don’t scowl, Midorima," he laughs.

_We shouldn’t even be here_ , you ought to say, but it can wait. He touches the corner of your mouth, soothing the frown from your lips, and you kiss his thin fingers, one by one, by one. The world can wait.

_I love you._

The words roll like thunder, each footstep of their approach, ominous in your head. They seem too inadequate an offering. You seem too inadequate. Despite this, he regards you in a way that’s entirely too honest, twisting your stomach with longing and nausea, and bringing mayhem into the careful order of your heart. You never knew a person could look at you and grip your soul in such a way it ached unbearably.

"I love you." Your voice is hoarse, your delivery imperfect and imprecise—an intruder in the impassable space between you and him.

“Midorima.” His warning comes so unsure.

In this moment, he is less a god and more a boy, and your footing in the world is lost. You hardly know the time and space in which you reside. Remembering is despair, for tomorrow, the words will have only echoed in your head and not passed through your lips. Tomorrow, his skin will be a stranger to yours, the map of his mouth a conjured dream.

And yet tomorrow you will still be here. Your devotion is a strange one, your loyalty impure. In the plainest words, you want him. You have five senses to devote, to consume with, to surrender wholly, and yet it feels not nearly enough.

“I just wanted to say it once,” you reply quietly.

It’s only pretend because you wanted to test how lacking the syllables felt on your tongue, how hollow you felt as they slid past your teeth. It’s only pretend but your heart breaks a little.

How sweet the sound.

.

.

.


End file.
